


Changes

by JayceCarter



Series: Random Fallout Shenanigans [14]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Feels, Haircuts, No Smut, Sarcasm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 04:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13264161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayceCarter/pseuds/JayceCarter
Summary: Deacon never thought he'd see Charmer cry and certainly not over something as silly as her hair.





	Changes

 The tears broke his heart.

 

His Charmer didn’t cry. She shot things. She cursed. She once made a ship fly.

 

She didn’t cry.

 

And yet there they were, escaping around the hands she covered her face with.

 

He knelt in front of her, his hands cupping her cheeks but making no move to uncover her face. “It’s just hair, Charmer.” He ignored the stench of the feral guts that she’d been trying for hours to get out of her hair. In the basement of a house, she’d tussled with two ferals, rolling around in their cesspool, getting things no one should ever have to smell stuck in her hair.

 

There was just no way to save it.

 

She shook her head. “It’s not just hair. It’s the last thing I have.”

 

His thumbs rubbed against her skin, her hands. “That isn’t true. Come on, look at me.”

 

She dropped her hands, misery painted across her features. “I like my hair.”

 

“I know, but it’ll grow back.”

 

“Yours doesn’t.”

 

His lips tipped up. “That’s because I don’t let it. Want to know a secret?”

 

She nodded.

 

“I’m a ginger. I let these luscious locks grow out? They’ll be red.”

 

“It’s been a while. Bet you they’ll be gray.”

 

He pressed one hand over his heart. “You wound me, Charmer.” After her chuckle, he let his tone grow soft. “So really, what it is about this that scares you so much? Because, I’ve seen you do things that make me shudder, like giving a Deathclaw egg back to mother dearest. Never figured a haircut would set you off.”

 

She bit her bottom lip, the skin going white from the pressure. Hell, she might draw blood if she kept it up. “I’ve given up a lot. I used to be so different, Deacon. I dressed up, I kept everything clean, I didn’t eat two hundred-year-old shit out of cans. I accepted that all, accepted so much of this new world. I now use rope to keep my damned pants on, and I accept that cotton pajamas are the best I can manage to look sexy, and my damned lips are always chapped. I can’t accept anything else. I’ve reached my limit.”

 

He tilted his head as he listened to the bullshit. She believed it, of course. Then again, he couldn’t blame her for it. Charmer had lived in a world that demanded different things, that cherished different things. She’d lived in a time when a woman’s waist and the color of her eyelids made her worthwhile.

 

She had no idea that so much had changed. No one fucking cared about her lips or her hair. They cared about what she could do, and his Charmer could do it all.

 

“You think people are going to look at you any different?”

 

“No, you idiot. I’m afraid you’re going to look at me different. You like me the way I am, because I'm different. What happens when I just become like everyone else?”

 

Ouch. Deacon leaned in and brushed his lips against hers, salt clinging to him from her tears when he pulled back. “You’re pretty damned stupid, Charmer. First? You once jumped off the top of Trinity Tower for no good reason and lived. You'll never be like everyone else. Secondly? Hair, no hair, doesn’t matter. Hell, you smell like rotten feral guts and I’m still kissing you.”

 

“I’m afraid. Afraid of losing everything I used to be.”

 

He reached out and picked up the buzzer. “We all lose things, and if anyone understand that, it’s me. But you know what I’ve learned? We gain things, too. Do you trust me?”

 

“No matter what else I believe, I believe you’re in my corner. Always have been.” She mirrored the words he’d said to her so long ago.

 

He flipped on the button, the buzzer coming to life. He’d done his own hair for years, could handle clippers with ease. He worked it over her head in stripes, dropping the ruined hair behind her so she didn’t have to see it. While he worked, he hummed.

 

Charmer never admitted it, but she loved his humming. He knew it when she’d sway as she cooked in the kitchen while he hummed, keeping time with whatever song he offered into the quiet space.

 

The humming offered a bridge between them. Neither spoke much truth, neither admitted what they felt. They made jokes and small talk constantly, but heart-to-hearts were for better people than them. So instead, his humming and her dancing proved a conversation all their own.

 

She didn’t sway in the chair as he hummed, but she relaxed, shoulders dropping.

 

When he finished, her scalp, a lighter shade of pale, showed beneath the half an inch of dark hair.

 

Charmer lifted her hands and slid them over her bald head as he turned off the clippers and set them down. She swallowed before walking over to the mirror, each step slow and hesitant. “So, this is me now?”

 

If only she could see what he saw.

 

Instead of trying to convince her of it, because he was shit at anything real, anything meaningful, he walked over and threw an arm around her.

 

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a spare pair of sunglasses, ones that matched his, and slid them onto her face. He leaned down, pressing his cheek against hers, their buzzed hair and glasses so similar in the dirty, scratched mirror.

 

“That makes it official,” he said.

 

“What?”

 

“We have a look now and that makes us an official crime fighting team. We need a name.”

 

“I’m not letting you call us Red Orchard.”

 

“That’s old news. I was thinking Waffle Chasers!”

 

She laughed and pushed his shoulder, her grin sinking in and easing the tightness in his chest. “That sounds like a filthy kink Hanock probably knows all about.”

 

He tapped a finger against his chin. “Maybe that’s where I heard that one from. What about Courser Quartet? We could invite X6! Molerat Mariachis? Oh! The Slutty Radroaches!”

 

Charmer pulled him in for a kiss as if she knew it was the only way to shut him up. She didn’t even flinch when he set a hand on the back of her shaved head.

 

She broke the kiss with a grin as if she’d won their little game.

 

Silly Charmer. No one bested Deacon in shenanigans, especially when they put a smile on her face that helped to wipe away the sadness, the tears he hated to see on her cheeks. He’d do anything to keep her from that sadness, to keep her laughing, to keep her happy.

 

Deacon pulled her tighter against him and leaned down to whisper into her ear. “I know. How about the Death Bunnies?”


End file.
